one year earlier*
Walls of ice and stone shattered and splintered like glass, people of all races and monsters alike; none were capable of escaping the eternal frost and the wild hunt that led it to all corners of the continent and unfortunately no one survived after the portal eradicated itself after geralt leapt through and to make matters worse yennifer was the only one that survived long enough to only take the leader out with every drop of magic she could muster and went too far by sacrificing her life to turn him into a puddle just as she was stabbed through the chest pinning her to the brickwork of a destroyed tower.
"My beloved geralt, my sweet ciri, and yes…even you triss-" she shuddered and trembled in despair but then took all of her heart's pain and let out a scream as she unleashed a literal storm of hellfire.
"Everything you have ever felt; everything you have buried…" she heard the old voice of her past rang out and in that instant, her radiant and golden fires became white and pink funneling her life's worth of pain into her magic.
"She's no daughter of mine"
"You horrible useless bitch!"
"Do you actually have what it takes"
"FOR ONCE IN MY PAINFUL LIFE, I AM SO SORRY I DIDN'T LOVE YOU ENOUGH"
Voices spoke to her from different points of her life that were most painful, and she felt like this was her last stand, so she dug deeper.
"You're just angry because you lost your chance to be beautiful!"
"Do you actually have what it takes?"
"Shatter your bottle; let your chaos burst free!"
Accepting her fate, she let her flames burn one last time. "I love you al-" she cried out as her flames were slowly suffocating in the unyielding cold and after a moment of warmth it was quickly snuffed out, freezing her over and shattered against the sheer force of the cold.
"YEN!" ciri yelled out as she sat up, reaching out for nothing in a cold sweat and tears streaming down her cheeks.
"That's the third time you've done that this week; nightmares worsening?" geralt asked, poking the fire with a stick wearing a look of concern for her continued lack of a proper night's sleep.
"Yeah, but this one was different somehow" she replied but felt no need to explain any further.
The transition to this odd world was a difficult thing to manage but seemed to get by fine, as long as you don't consider the fact that their training was not suited for this place.
"We're supposed to have been gone days ago from vale, how much longer till mistral?" Ciri asked trying to warm herself with her cloak, all I vain as a gust of icy wind hit her back making her teeth chatter.
"I've been focused on how the hunt that's left hasn't come looking for you since we killed a small battalion's worth and more importantly, how come when you teleport they aren't tracking it?"
"I try to think of it as a sign the frost killed them all and I'm finally free to live my life without looking over my shoulder for them."
Smiling at that geralt shook his head while he put more fuel on the fire. They'd traveled all over remnant but his plan for once was to try and settle down, get a job and give up being a witcher…unfortunately his services were never not needed seeing as grimm were all the worse of a threat than his world's monsters.
"I've taught you plenty of things, how about you teach me about this world; remnant is our new home, let's make the most of it" he smiled to her but she ignored him as she sat near the fire as it grew in size. Her mind was so overwhelmed with the continent she grew less talkative over the years so these topics usually got her to ramble on while he listened attentively watching the spark ignite as if talking about other worlds was her guilty pleasure….right up there with doughnuts, she loved those things as much as she loved breathing.
An hour Into her rambling, geralt stopped her by a shushing motion. Two seconds of dead silence geralt looked around and whispered "I think something is coming. He said, grabbing his steel sword and walked off leaving her to herself, and she'd have stayed put if not for the sound of lightning and something exploding over the tree line and screaming followed suit.
"geralt, wait for me!" she said jumping to her feet and took off in a dead sprint towards a torn up forest that showed signs of a crash landing that took half the river twenty fledgling grimm and two alpha Beowolves. But she'd not know like geralt had.
Weaving through fallen trees, rotting Grimm and apparently remnants of a small RV ciri found a boy- no a man no older than her perhaps older- unconscious and battered with his left arm mangled and shattered and worst of all his bodysuit was covered in massive dents scratches and gashes all over as well as dirt and blood.
"There's no time to save his arm; amputation is his best bet if he's going to avoid blood rot and severe fever" geralt said grabbing and tearing off the armor and looked at ciri "I need your help"
"Why my help, his armor shouldn't be too hard to cut into" she replied, sitting the man up against a fallen tree.
"This black suit you saw under his shattered armor won't allow me to cut it off, but I know what will" geralt said grabbing his arm to inspect the arm portion and added "magic of your caliber will no doubt work perfectly"
She sighed, unsheathing her blade and said, "how much of his arm is broken?"
"From the elbow down but-" he tried to say but watched her sword slice right through his arm severing it at the top of his elbow and immediately went right to closing the wound with magic and wrapped the stump to help stop the bleeding, geralt took notice of the material and noticed she was wrapping it in straps of her old white shirt without thinking, but since it was an emergency, he didn't say a word about it, just admired her handiwork.
Just before geralt could ask about why he could be out in the forest, a man about the exact age as this unconscious man they found stepped out of the darkness wearing all black sporting a white fang mask and red hair with two black horns growing from his head and pointed his blade at them "are you friend or enemy?" he asked glaring at the pair of them.
Ciri put a hand on geralt's chest and sheathed her sword to show the man they weren't bad nor had ill intent.
"Neither we're just out her hunting when we'd heard an explosion we have a camp out at the edge of the woods, we meant no harm" she explained briefly calming the man greatly, but he stayed on guard in case a threat came by.
"His arm was shattered and mangled, so I cut it off, if you know him, then you're his best bet at survival" she added handing him over to the strange man and left with geralt in tow.
She didn't know what the white haired guy was, but he was cute and looked too dangerous to just be some civilian who got hurt; people who were being hunted wouldn't be out there in the wilderness, there was a reason she found him but who's to say that maybe it was purely coincidence.
Both walked through the woods for hours until geralt spotted a clearing and in the space was a stone crypt.
"Well, we can stay here for the night" geralt started as he used aard to demolish the weak door and smiled "and this time we won't need a fire down here"
Watching their step for loose debris was the easy part, ciri had no issues with it but crypts were smelly, damp and held angry souls that became wraiths…but thankfully this world's closest thing to a ghost was the grimm that possessed objects and made bodies out of them.
Geralt learned from a huntsman that it was called a Geist, a grimm spirit that had manifested from a corrupted heart and the blood of a grimm corpse.
"Geralt, do you think we would be dead if we'd stayed in the continent after the great frost came through the portal?" She asked as she grabbed a torch he'd offered to her when he found it next to a stone coffin holding a half eaten skeleton and most its torso gone.
"I'm not completely sure ciri, but I like to think we got luck escaping to this world" he replied putting his bedroll on the ground and lay down and closed his eyes, "I miss it everyday, im sorry I did that; jumping in was not what you were expecting, but I cant change our past, just our future"
Knowing what he'd committed to ciri fully understood the compulsion to run after her, he was scared and couldn't let her die. She was upset, no doubts there, the life she'd almost thrown away for the continent was hers to do with as she chose.
"What if by opening the portal to this world the wild hunt lost my scent and we're stranded in this reality?"
Stiffening at the seemingly innocent question, geralt sighed and grabbed his sword to sharpen it out. "For starters, the hunt wouldn't have stopped when you weren't found, we killed the big hitters so a power vacuum was likely made. But honestly, I can't see them following since we have no proof; we should just count ourselves lucky."
Sorry I'm posting such a short chapter, I won't lie, I lost focus and couldn't find more to add with this.
Comment anything you think could be worked on at:
H6pp1n355_in_misery.
Criticism is appreciated